On March 6, Cameroon Prime Minister (PM), Chief Dr. Joseph Dion Ngute, who is identified on a micro-blogging social media platform, X, formerly Twitter, as PM – Dion Ngute – CMR (with the handle @joDionNgute), tweeted about a discussion he had with Leonardo Santos Simoa. PM Ngute’s guest at the Star Building was the chairman of the Cameroon-Nigeria Mixed Commission to demarcate the borders of these countries, as well as a Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for West Africa and the Sahel (UNOWAS).
The PM, while tweeting, tagged or mentioned Leonardo Santos Simoa as @Leonardo Santos Simoa. At the time of this report, the PM has not noticed that @Leonardo is someone called Leonardo Torres, who is completely different from the person whom he had discussions with at the Star Building. That inability to master tweeting on the microblogging platform is misleading Cameroonians.
What the Head of Government, PM Dion Ngute, just did is just a myriad of what is happening in other public institutions in Cameroon.
The Ministry of Housing and Urban Planning, abbreviated in French as MINHDU, has been wrongly tagged or mentioned by several government institutions.
Feicom (@FEICOM1), in one of its tweets on October 3, 2022, talking about collective territorial decentralization, tagged the Ministry of Housing and Urban Planning as @MINHDU.
Even CRTVweb (@CRTV_web), tweeting about Minister Ketcha Koutes talking about works on the Yaounda-Nsimalen stretch of road on September 14, 2022, tagged the ministry as @Minhdu.
What is behind that handle is a person called Minhu Du Alneng (@minhdu).
The X handle for the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, though without a verified tick, is MINHDU (@cameroun_minhdu).
Another institution that is also misleading people is the Ministry of Higher Education.
On January 31, 2024, it tweeted about the meeting Minister Fame Ndongo had with the Rector of L’Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie. While tagging the name of this school, MINESUP Cmr-Official (@MinesupCmr) wrote @auf. That was completely misleading because @auf belongs to someone called Alf.
Meanwhile, X’s handle for that school is instead @auf_org.
The Ministry of Decentralization and Local Development is not also left out in the misinformation channel.
The Ministry is operating two X accounts, using one to tag another. The handles are @MindDevel and @MINDDEVEL1. The first one stopped updating in 2021.
The current active one, @MINDDEVEL1, on March 6, while drilling councils on the management of accounts, tagged the Ministry of Supreme State Audit as @ConsuPe, which is someone called Consuelo Penas Adan.
Meanwhile, the handle for the Ministry of Supreme State Audit is @SuperieurL.
All this wrongful tagging has created a lot of misleading information among Cameroonians.
According to a report by mass communication specialist Sana Khan, the “@” symbol is used to mention or tag other users in a tweet.
“When you include the “@” symbol, it creates a link to that user’s profile and notifies them of the mention. This allows for direct communication and engagement with specific individuals or groups,” she said.
According to Constella Intelligence, an online site that works to defeat digital risk, misinformation can incite rage, contribute to growing social divides, and lead people to take action based on false pretenses.
Cameroonian government officials and institutions that people rely on may not know the danger they have caused by simply referring to the wrong people by tagging them.
However, they might say those are parody accounts; then what explains why the Ministry cannot have verified accounts?
